Molly's Heartbreak
by SocietalFlub
Summary: REUPLOADED. One day Sherlock turns up at the lab with a ring on his finger. How will Molly react?


Molly loved Sherlock. She was tired of ignoring the blatant truth, which was that she was in love with her one and only, the man called Sherlock Holmes. The name was never absent from her mind; Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. He was the love of her adult life, but he didn't even know it—and Molly had no intent on changing that.

Meagre Molly was dreadfully shy, and she'd since accepted that that would keep Sherlock from being hers. Although she'd lethargically accepted her fate, it still didn't hurt any less to see that Sherlock was just fine without her: on Christmas he'd been able to identify a woman called Irene Adler by looking at her naked body, which led Molly to the heartbreaking realisation that they'd done despicable things with (or to) each other. Molly didn't think anything would top how she felt when thinking about him with another woman, but then came a dreadful day in June five years after the incident in the morgue.

/

Sherlock had been back from the dead for a year and a half, and everyone was over the shock. She'd been in on it the whole time, his faked death. She had even been the one to help him on the day that crushed John Watson.

He, John, had been waiting outside the mortuary with Molly while Sherlock experimented inside. Neither of them knew why, but the latter-most man had insisted he be alone. Molly and John shook their heads and laughed at Sherlock's inexplicable quirks.

Molly had been idly chatting with John when his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, reading a text. Glinting on his second-to-last finger was a silver band, unscratched and modest.

She stopped mid-sentence, interjecting herself with a soft, 'Oh!'

'John, are you married?'

His eyes widened. Molly thought it almost looked as though he regretted inadvertently bringing attention to it.

'Oh, erm, yeah, I am,' he said, eyes flitting from Molly's own to the floor.

'I had no idea! When was the ceremony?'

'Yeah, well, it was a small wedding, we wanted to keep it pretty low-key. It was two weeks ago yesterday.'

'Congratulations! Wow, sorry, I had no idea you were even in a relationship! What's her name? Sorry, that's so horribly blunt of me, I just... I had no idea.'

'Her name? Oh, erm... Sherlock!' John turned to the door where Sherlock had just emerged from.

Molly smiled. The way John had phrased it, it had sounded as though Sherlock was the one John had married.

'Right, Sherlock, I've got to pop out—emergency surgery. I'll see you at home late tonight; don't wait up for me for dinner.'

'I won't,' said Sherlock.

Molly noticed John giving Sherlock a pointed look.

'Actually try and eat something tonight, yeah? For me?'

Sherlock, jaw set, took a glance at John's earnest gaze boring into him and sighed. 'Fine. But I make no guarantees.' Molly noted how John could get Sherlock to do an awful lot considering how stubborn he was around her and everyone else she'd ever seen.

'Good enough for me,' he replied and turned to Molly. 'Great seeing you again, Molly. Bye, Sherlock,' he called out over his shoulder as he briskly walked toward the hospital exit.

'Alright, Molly, you can come back in now. I've just got to let this bacteria I've found culture for 48 hours and then I'll be back to collect it. Oh, where do you keep the agar? It's not where I put it last time.'

Molly showed Sherlock to everything he'd needed (his list turned out to be longer than just agar) and he'd finished preparing his mysterious—and frankly alarming—bacteria for culturing.

'Thank you, Molly, you've been very helpful,' he said, pulling off his latex gloves. 'Like I said, I'll be back in two days at this time to collect my cultures.'

As he stripped the left glove off, Molly saw a silver band on his finger. After her instantaneous initial thoughts ('Why is everyone married all of a sudden but me?'), reality gave way on poor Molly's heart.

Sherlock was married. Now there was zero chance for her to be with him, even if she did miraculously get over her crippling shyness.

It was probably that dead woman that turned out to be not-dead, the beautiful one whose body Sherlock was familiar with to an intimate degree. The one who had curves where she didn't and—she swallowed in an attempt to smooth the lump in her throat—a ring where she probably never would; the one who had a Sherlock to expect home for supper and a bed that he took a jointed claim to.

Sherlock had a ring on his finger and there was a woman with its mate out there somewhere who was so much more capable of giving Sherlock the love she knew he deserved than she would ever have been.

'Right then, erm, goodbye Sherlock,' she said in an effort to speed his departure along, not believing that she was actually wishing that he would leave.

He paused, looking uncharacteristically puzzled.

'Oh. Goodbye then, Molly. I look forward to seeing you again.'

This woman had taught him empathy, Molly gathered as she recognised Sherlock's attempts to make her feel better. No matter how astute he was, he probably had no idea why she was even getting brisk with him at all.

She felt sick to her stomach. Swallowing to try to keep down whatever it was that was trying to come back up, tears that had begun to form as his back turned to her flowed freely once the door to the mortuary thunked closed.

/

Two days later, Sherlock was back at the morgue with John in tow. It was a quiet day (well, the morgue was always quiet, considering); Molly had gotten what small amount of work she'd had that day done early, so she sat with John in the lab, watching Sherlock studying his culture under the microscope.

Molly was having a difficult accepting the fact that Sherlock was really married, and so being in the same room as him so soon after the shock was difficult for her.

Squirming with nervous energy, she squeaked into the silence, 'Anyone for coffee?' She was desperate to get away from Sherlock for even just a moment, feeling a fog of awkwardness that only she recognised cloud the room.

'None for me, thanks,' said John.

Sherlock looked up. 'Yes, please. Black—'

'—Two sugars, yes I know,' finished Molly. 'Be back in a tick.'

More than a tick passed as the queue in the canteen went on for ages. Why everyone felt that three forty-three in the afternoon was an optimal time for lunch was beyond Molly, but nevertheless she waited her turn and was finally able to return to the lab.

Coffees in hand, she backed in to the door, pushing it open with her rear. She'd apparently not made any noise, or otherwise the men seemed not to notice her, because they were looking only at each other when she walked in.

She nearly dropped the to-go cups at the sight of Sherlock and John before her; the latter had moved to where Sherlock's microscope was set and was resting his bum against the counter casually. Sherlock stood in front of him, only six inches of space separating their bodies. They were holding both of the other's hands: Sherlock brought John's to his mouth and kissed his fingers, then pulling away but still holding John's hands in his own. Sherlock was absently playing with John's ring as he smiled down at him in a way Molly had never seen him do before.

'Do you think she'll ever get it that we're married to each other?' Sherlock said quietly with a soft laugh.

'Cut her some slack,' John said, watching his husband caress his hands. 'We've not exactly been displaying, well, anything.'

'Poor girl, I think she's still infatuated with me.'

'That's because she's smart. It'd take an idiot not to love you,' John said, moving his gaze from his hands to meet his lover's eyes.

At that point, Molly had heard enough, and, actually dropping the coffees this time, she rushed back out the door intent on leaving the hospital, maybe for good. She felt so stupid, how had she not realised that it was John and Sherlock? It had always been them, really. Even before the couple had met, Sherlock was unavailable to her because he'd been waiting for someone like John. Or maybe he hadn't been, Molly had never been sure if he was even interested in a relationship with anyone.

All Molly knew was that she had never been right for Sherlock, and now she never would have the chance to try.


End file.
